Il Processo Penale Canonico: Commento al Codice di Diritto Canonico Libro VII, Parte IV by Claudio Papale (review)

IL PROCESSO PENALE CANONICO Commento al Codice di Diritto Canonico Libro VII, Parte IV by Claudio Papale. Manuali Diritto 19. Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 2007. In an era that is still somewhat preoccupied with dealing with the tragedy of clerical sexual abuse of minors, there has been an increasing interest in penal procedural law. While the literature in this area in the first decade and a half after the promulgation of the 1983 code was rather sparse, it has been very much in evidence recently as a result of the increasing number of administrative and judicial penal procedures. This has been especially true since the promulgation of the original April 2001 motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela of John Paul II (SST) and the issuing of a May 2001 letter by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) briefly explaining its implications. This rather insightful work constitutes volume 19 in the series Manuali Diritto published by the Urbaniana University Press. The author is an adjunct professor of penal law and penal procedural law at the University . He recently also published a study of law in the life and ministry of John Paul II. Among the issues the author knowledgeably addresses are the following : the formalities for making an allegation of ecclesial wrongdoing, the right of the accused to defend himself and to avail himself of counsel, the pursuit of a criminal action by the promoter of justice and the possible renunciation of such, the measures enabling the party suffering damages to obtain a remedy and the distinction between this person and the alleged victim of a delict. This reasonably well organized and sharply focused work is divided into six chapters, not all of the same length. First P initially clarifies some foundational concepts such as the delict, imputability, the penalty, the principle of legality, and the notion of process. Then he considers in some detail the various facets of the pre-process preliminary investigation , which has become an especially important aspect of the broad penal environment despite being minimally structured in the current code by contrast to its 1917 predecessor. Canonists called upon to implement administrative and judicial penal procedures will find helpful P’s observations on the dynamics of those procedures. Not surprisingly the treatment of the more detailed judicial procedure takes considerably more space (97–154) than the less structured administrative penal procedure (67–98). The author’s careful discussion of various pertinent procedural themes will prove valuable to both practitioners of the law and professors in academic settings. book reviews 261 262 the jurist Interestingly enough in the section on administrative procedure P also discusses the important title 5 of part I of Book VI on applying penalties (cc. 1341–1353) with its varied provisions on the discretion accorded the penalizing authority, which is obviously relevant to judicial procedure as well. The section on judicial procedure deals extensively not simply with the specific canons on penal procedure in part IV of Book VII (cc. 1721–1728) but with the relevant canons on the formal contentious procedure that constitute the main framework for the penal trial (cc. 1501– 1655). Finally P treats very briefly the chapter on an action for damages that may not be of significant interest to most practitioners but may be of some relevance in certain cases.The last chapter examines relativelyrecent universallegislationonreserveddelictsandcommentsonthesignificantpro visions of the original SST and the aforementioned May 2001 CDF letter commenting on it. Frankly it might have been more helpful to the reader if this material had been integrated into the treatment of the formal penal procedures. This would have been a more challenging task, but it would have facilitated the reader’s understanding of the ius vigens. There is also a brief section on the June 26, 1997 CDF process for investigating possible doctrinal errors; however, this is a relatively minor focus of the author and surely deserves a more detailed treatment in another venue, although it is perhaps not of great practical importance at the moment. In exploring administrative and judicial penal procedures P reflects a fairly thorough familiarity with canonists writing in Italian as well as Latin including some of the commentators on the 1917 code...